In the News (Mon 19 Nov 18)

The WorldEconomy is a vital resource for researchers, analysts and policy-advisors interested in trade policy and other open economy issues embracing international trade and the environment, international finance, and trade and development.

Whilst The WorldEconomy concentrates on trade policy issues - on a country basis, regionally and globally - it also covers broader issues such as exchange rates, IMF/World Bank, debt, environmental and other international issues as they relate to trade.

The worldeconomy can be evaluated in various ways, depending on the model used, and this valuation can then be represented in various ways (for example, in 2006 US dollars).

It is inseparable from the geography and ecology of Earth, and is therefore somewhat of a misnomer, since, while definitions and representations of the "worldeconomy" vary widely, they must at a minimum exclude any consideration of resources or value based outside of the Earth.

The causes: sluggishness in the USeconomy (21.6% of GWP) and in the EU economy (21.4% of GWP) ; continued stagnation in the Japanese economy (7.0% of GWP); and spillover effects in the less developed regions of the world.

Since 1973, the worldeconomy seems to have returned to a pace of growth roughly similar to the 2.5% yearly rate of 1870-1913, the previous "Golden Age" of economic development, when the worldeconomy as we know it took its present shape.

The fourth way in which the worldeconomy is polarizing is through the inability of many nation-states to mobilize sufficient resources to ensure their survival.

However, this entailed the expansion of the geographical size of the world in question, the development of different modes of labor control and the creation of relatively strong state machineries in the states of Western Europe.

The new worldeconomy differed from earlier empire systems because it was not a single political unit.

Although the functioning of the worldeconomy appears to create increasingly larger disparities between the various types of economies, the relationship between the core and its periphery and semi-periphery remains relative, not constant.

www.fordham.edu /halsall/med/wall.html (2342 words)

The National Interest | Article | Trading Places(Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-19)

Even more novel is that what is emerging is not one but four worldeconomies: a worldeconomy of information; of money; of multinationals (one no longer dominated by American enterprises); and a mercantilist worldeconomy of goods, services and trade.

A mercantilist worldeconomy, however, faces the same problems that led to the ultimate collapse of mercantilist national policies: It is impossible to export unless someone imports.

Even the French, reluctantly, are integrating their economy and their industries--and even their agriculture--into the economy, the industries and the agriculture of the EU (provided that the Germans foot the bill).

The richest 20% of the world's population in northern industrial countries uses 70% of the world's energy, 75% of the world's metals, 85% of the world's wood, and 60% of the world's food.

The data shows that during a period of significant growth in world trade (1960 to 1989), global inequality got significantly worse: the ratio between the richest 20% and poorest 20% of the world population went from 30 to 1 to 59 to 1.

Rich outsiders are allowed to enter the local economy and take away wealth in the form of natural resources or financial profits, and in return the local elites get a cut of the take so they can maintain the armies and police forces that keep them in power.

Although the United States was actively involved in WorldWar I for only nineteen months, from April 1917 to November 1919, the mobilization of the economy was extraordinary.

Once the size of the Army had been determined, the demands on the economy became obvious, although the means to satisfy them did not: food and clothing, guns and ammunition, places to train, and the means of transport.

[7] Before the war the center of the world capital market was London, and the Bank of England was the world's most important financial institution; after the war leadership shifted to New York, and the role of the Federal Reserve was enhanced.

The increased liberalization of world trade has increased the scope of international division of labor and permanently helped raise growth in the world as a whole and in particular in third-world countries.

The American economy's strong side is that it is still one of the most market-oriented economies in the world, with tax rates and regulation being far less burdensome than in the major European economies and Japan.

For the worldeconomy as a whole, we should in the short-term outlook expect the current boom to continue but at the price of aggravating the globaleconomic imbalances.

www.mises.org /story/1804 (3213 words)

FT.com - Special Reports / World Economy(Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-19)

When the IMF announced it had revised upwards its forecast for worldeconomic growth, it looked as though this year's annual meetings would be taking place in a climate of optimism.

The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank must be weary of facing endless criticism from development campaigners and debtor countries.

The world'soil industry has been in turmoil for the past year as an inexorable and, in part, inexplicable rise in prices has put petroleum back on the globaleconomic agenda.

WORLDWAR I? The European economy was devastated by the war, while the United States economy grew in response to the demands of the war.

The U. economy had been prosperous throughout the 1920,s because, at the end of the war, U.S. industry was very productive and wealthy with the capital to finance growth, U.S. consumers had worked and saved during WorldWar I and they created a demand for the products of industry.

WorldWar I created the conditions which allowed fascism to develop, and which caused the American depression to become a global depression.

In such a world, a global steering committee that included the key players from each of the three regions—including China and Korea in East Asia, Brazil and Argentina in South America—would be of cardinal importance in managing relations among the regions, which would in turn be central for global harmony and stability.

The prospect of such a tripartite world, which is quite feasible over the next decade or even less, provides a powerful additional rationale for the proposition that the G-20 should gradually but steadily supersede the G-7 as the informal steering committee for the worldeconomy.

The G-7 would be even more inadequate for that task in a world where not only its share of the worldeconomy continued to decline substantially but where leaders of key regional arrangements were outside the group.

www.iie.com /publications/papers/bergsten0304-2.htm (3563 words)

Business : World Economy : HindustanTimes.com(Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-19)

President Putin made bold promises to boost Russia's economy and living standards, but his call to damp down inflation may make it harder to attain those goals.

Worldoil trade should be switched to a basket of currencies, including the euro, rather than be priced in dollars only, the EC said.

Indonesia's economy grew a tad more than expected in year ended first quarter, but economists said expansion was too small to counter chronic unemployment.

This worldeconomy course describes the repartition of wealth between different countries and regions.

Out of the 6.5 billion inhabitants that make up the worlds population in the year 2004, 2.3 billion live in free societies, 1.5 in partially free societies and 2.2 in countries ruled by dictators or totalitarian regimes.

Its economy should have taken off again, but endemic wars in the horn of Africa form an obstacle to its recovery.

The closest parallel to their emergence is the saga of 19th-century America, a huge continental economy with a young, driven workforce that grabbed the lead in agriculture, apparel, and the high technologies of the era, such as steam engines, the telegraph, and electric lights.

Never has the world seen the simultaneous, sustained takeoffs of two nations that together account for one-third of the planet's population.

China already has the world's biggest base of cell-phone subscribers -- 350 million -- and that is expected to near 600 million by 2009.

Will Electronic Commerce Drive the World Economy?(Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-19)

While there is no easy way to estimate the impact of electronic commerce on the worldeconomy, the statistics presented by this study make its future seem impressive indeed.

The issues vary around the world, but probably the biggest single reason is the enormous difference between the number of people connected to the Internet in the US compared to other parts of the world.

Users in many parts of the world have limited or poor access to the high-speed data access lines that electronic commerce relies on.

Less than one per cent of what the world spent every year on weapons was needed to put every child into school by the year 2000 and yet it didn't happen.

The World Bank has been criticized for almost arbitrarily coming up with a definition of a poverty line to mean one dollar per day (of which they say there are about 1.3 billion people).

This allows the World Bank to insist that the world is indeed “on the right track” in terms of poverty reduction strategy, attributing this “success” to the design and implementation of “good” or “better policies”.

The Landbridge throughout Eurasia, financed with a New Bretton Woods System, is the only pathway toward rebuilding the worldeconomy, including especially the development of the underdeveloped nations, and it remains is the only basis for establishing durable peace.

The second path is known as the Eurasian Land-Bridge proposal of Lyndon LaRouche, an 147;economic locomotive to pull the world out of depression, and a science driver to spread scientific progress to technology and industry.

China shares this perspective, and adds to it the largest water management and hydroelectric projects in the world, as the only large economy in the world still growing.